There is no known human civilization where homosexuality didn’t exist, something we know from the records, laws, and art they left behind. Even in countries where it is viciously repressed it still exists, though it’s driven into the shadows. (Then the people who meet up in “unsavory” places are blamed for how and where they meet, as if there are other options.) The fact of the matter is that homosexuality just IS and it’s not going to go away to suit you OR your religious leaders. In fact what you, the Pope, or the Religious Right think about it is beside the point, doesn’t matter. It’s just noise, sound and fury signifying nothing. You might as well rail against left-handedness or red hair.

Scientific studies tell us there is a genetic component to sexuality in general, though it’s really only for homosexuality that they seek a “cause.” But they have found genetic links to (male at least) “gayism.” There also seems to be a link to conditions in the womb during gestation, differing levels of hormones at various stages of development. In any case the scientific evidence tells us there is an inborn predisposition to be gay from birth, that it isn’t a “choice” as right wing rhetoric would have it. (Though if it WERE a choice, so what? Either we are free or we aren’t, able to make choices like which religion to follow or whom to marry without interference. And religion IS a choice. It’s typical that people continue in the religion inwhich they were raised, but people also change religions all the time or drop the whole idea completely, unlike for example homosexuality. No one is BORN Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or Hindi- they have to be trained into it.)

On the individual, human level, gay people are raised with the same expectations as everyone else, that we will eventually meet a person of the opposite gender and fall in love (form a pair-bond) then produce children. But that moment never comes for gay people, instead of being sexually attracted/interested in those of the opposite sex their attention is drawn by those of their same gender. Once again it just IS and you can fight it but despite the false, religion-driven language of “choice” and “change” it’s more psychologically healthy to just accept it and get on with your life. Many people have fought their inborn sexuality and they all lost, only bringing misery to themselves and others, most often the opposite-sex partners they use to “change” and other gays. It’s no accident that so many of the professional anti-gay activists seem to think more about gay sex than actual “practicing” homosexuals and often sound and look very stereotypically gay. Either accept yourself or waste your life demonizing other gays until, in your 60s, you end up being caught hiring a hustler to “carry your luggage.” Skip the drama and misery, for yourself and others!

There was a chant/slogan from the 1980s/90s ActUp/Queer Nation protests that puts it far more succinctly. “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it!” Homosexuality is literally a fact of life and neither you nor your religious leaders get to change reality to suit yourselves, so now that you’ve thrown your ill-educated tantrum, get the fuck over it!

I’ll explain it like this. Take the hatred and bigotry you call a religion and stick it where the sun don’t shine and leave your fellow human beings alone to live their own lives the way they see fit, just like you do.

Mar 4, 2014 at 9:47 am · @Reply ·

Fitz

Given that the email wasn’t in the tone of “You dirty fagots”, I think that the best approach is to take it at face value. Someone really can’t understand us– which means that he is isolated either by culture and location or by other circumstance. I also think it’s fair to say that these questions do not occur to 100% straight guys. Meaning, on some level, he’s asking for help. His poor language use might be from English being a second language. … and.. it’s not like Queerty can really call someone out on that without looking like a republican senator caught on vacation with his male massage therapist.

Mar 4, 2014 at 9:50 am · @Reply ·

Cam

Is it “Normal” for people to think that they are eating the flesh and drinking the blood of somebody who died 2000 years ago?

Is it “Normal” for people to think that when they die they get their own planet?

Is it “Normal” to blow yourself and hundreds of others up because you think you will get a bunch of virgin slaves after you are dead?

No, but funny enough I don’t see anybody outlawing religion.

Look, people who think that being gay is somehow a choice and was started somewhere obviously feel that they themselves have a choice. So in other words, the ones questioning it are probably struggling closet cases. hopefully they will come out and be free rather than being like George Rekers or Aaron Schock.

To the person who wrote the e-mail I want to say the following.

Think for a while on why it matters to anybody? Should anybody be bothered that my grandmother likes to knit? What if a friend of yours married a girl who you thought was a little skinny or a little heavy? Would you outlaw it?

So the main question is, why should it bother anybody? It doesn’t effect anybody who isn’t gay, so where does all this hatred come from…unless….it is an easy way to continue to get people to follow a preacher or an anti-gay politician. If you tell them something horrible is out there, they will continue to pay you or to vote for you.

They could just as easily have said that bunny rabbits were evil.

Mar 4, 2014 at 10:14 am · @Reply ·

FlavP

Does this guy really want to understand us?

What Caliban wrote in this comments section pretty much sums it up. Homosexuality has existed since the beginning of time and it will exist until the end of time.

Are people like this person going to ever understand it? Probably not, if he has to ask. If he has to ask us why we exist, let me throw the question right back at him: “Why do you exist the way you are, whether straight, confused or in the closet?”

Furthermore, we gays are sort of getting tired of having to “explain” to religious bigots why we exist. We exist — period.

If your all-powerful god created us, and he “never makes a mistake”, then get over it! You are so accustomed to believing “He” does things in his own way, following his own divine logic and based on his own divine plan; you, religious bigots, claim to be faithful to his teachings, well, then you should have faith that there is a reason why we exist and we keep on existing. It should be none of your concern as to what, why or how. A main part of your faith is to “have faith”! The fact that you make such a big deal about us existing shows what a bunch of hypocrites you really are — all the worse because you use passages of a 5000-year-old, outdated book to justify your hypocrisy.

Why are the way we are? Because it is that way — and if you are really a religious person, that should be enough for you.

Still, after many years of studying religions and philosophy, as they would apply to us homosexuals, I believe I can let you in on a little secret: our job is to make sure the balance between the male and female in the universe is maintained. Only those who mirror that balance within themselves have that extra spark and it is we homosexuals, both male and female, who have that spark.

I have no illusions that you, with the mastery of the English language that you have shown us, will be able to understand that, though.

Mar 4, 2014 at 10:37 am · @Reply ·

the other Greg

The article says the writer was a “she” not a “he.” Unless that was a misspelling too (but they corrected the other ones). We’re lucky “jb” is no longer with us to lecture us about how horrible women are, etc. etc. etc.!

Mar 4, 2014 at 10:52 am · @Reply ·

DCNimbus

Tell the reader Gayisms started just before Thugs invented Jive.

Mar 4, 2014 at 11:03 am · @Reply ·

Steve318

There’s a simple explanation for why straights are straight, gays are gay, and bis are bi. Captain Kirk said it best in “The Trouble with Tribbles:” “There is no accounting for taste.”

Mar 4, 2014 at 11:44 am · @Reply ·

EGO

The animal kingdom also has gays according to sciences observations. We are all part of this planet. To find out who we are, each of us must think beyond sex and into ourselves, our soles, our hearts, or whatever we want to call it. We must sort through the information we have learned, understand our feelings, and resolve the differences. There are positive values taught by parenting, religion, schools, etc. that apply to all of us. The negative values are not helpful and are part of the reason so many are leaving religion behind. I have gay friends who got married to the opposite sex because society i.e. religion, parents, etc. told them to. Later on they got divorced because they realized they were gay and now they are happily married to their same-sex partners.

Dude has bigger problems than trying to figure out how homosexuality works. He’s also probably similarly mystified by computers, toasters, and rain. Forget the specifics: I’d tell dude he needs to get an education, and then the world won’t seem so mysterious (and adults will start talking to him).

Mar 4, 2014 at 1:02 pm · @Reply ·

sfbeast

Dear confused person. There is no gayism. It’s all in your mind.

Mar 4, 2014 at 1:13 pm · @Reply ·

Jim

It is a matter of attraction, which cannot be changed. One can ignore attraction…or deny it, as many do..but it cannot be changed. Why are some men attracted to tall thin blond women while other men like hefty brunettes? Why are some women attracted to nerdy bookish guys while others to empty headed jocks? Why do some guys like guys and some women like women?
It is how we are all wired. If you are human…and I am operating on assumption here….you know that feeling you get when you see someone you are attracted to. It is not a thought…it is a feeling, an instinct, a physical reaction. Do you know how to stop that…or make it happen? Of course not…no one does. You can choose to ignore it or not act on it…but the feeling does not go away. Period. Think about it.
As far as why are there more “gays” now? Because finally, we are not being as defamed…as hunted down…as hated..as we have been for years. Finally, gays are arriving to the place women did…first when they got the vote 100 years ago and then again in the 70s & 80s when they left the kitchens if they wanted to…and where blacks also arrived. Pretty much, it is now politically correct to be hateful only to fat people, as gays finally have the same political protection and basic legal rights that YOU have always had…because of simple attraction. Make sense? Of course not, but we have been second class citizens for years. There aren’t more gay people, dear inquiring mind….just more visible ones now.

Mar 4, 2014 at 2:48 pm · @Reply ·

Paulie

Hi
“Gayism”??!!…..I’ve never heard it referred to quite that way. But to the confused person who’s letter is spotlighted in the articl

Mar 4, 2014 at 2:53 pm · @Reply ·

LubbockGayMale

Gayism… the lifestyle where you have to defend your choice of lovers?

Mar 4, 2014 at 2:56 pm · @Reply ·

Paulie

As i was saying, before i hit the “submit” button by mistake…its not complicated, its pretty much the same as a straight couple feel about one another…just that its pretty2 men, or 2 women who have the love and affection for each other…simple, right?
And why is it that someone who doesn’t understand homosexuality is reading Queerty in the first place?

Mar 4, 2014 at 3:02 pm · @Reply ·

Elloreigh

My serious reply, inline with quotes from the original message:

“I really want to know what u guys think about gayism”

I think “gayism” is a rather strange word. The -ism suffix could suggest “gay” as a philosophy or religion; similar to its use in words like stoicism or Calvinism. If that is the intended meaning, it illustrates a deep misunderstanding of what same-sex orientation is. It is not a philosophy. It is not a religion. It is not a lifestyle. It is merely attraction to the same sex, similar to how heterosexuals are attracted to the opposite sex.

“do u guys honestly think its perfectly normal to be gay normal for a man to kiss a fellow man for a girl n a girl to marry”

That depends on what you mean by “normal”. I don’t think it’s what the majority of people do. I do think that while these things take place in a statistically small population, they are not outside the realm of variation one expects to see within the human population as a whole. Within the population of people who are attracted to the same sex, I think that same-sex behavior is a normal outcome of that orientation. As for the word “normal” used as a value or moral judgment, I’m sure it has value to people for whom same-sex orientation is integral to their identity. Whether it has value to society may seem open to debate, but I do not think it is ultimately detrimental to society, on the whole. I otherwise think that in abstract terms, homosexuality is morally neutral; that one cannot make a judgment about its morality without examining a specific instance, and that this judgment would be limited to that specific instance, not something applicable in such general terms as expressed in the original message.

“jeez this is ridiculous”

So you think homosexuality deserves ridicule? I absolutely disagree.

“I really want u guys to explain to me”.

I am not ultimately persuaded as to the alleged sincerity of this statement. The overall tone does not seem to indicate that you really do want us to provide honest answers to these questions, as they’re unlikely to fit your pre-judging of same-sex orientation, and by extension, people who identify as gay or engage in same-sex behavior.

“can somebody really explain to me how gayism really started?”

No. Because I think that “gayism” as you seem to have conceptualized it is a thing that simply fails to exist. There is a growing body of research about the possible causes of same-sex orientation, but we don’t yet have a complete picture of how it arises.

“because honestly upto date I still don’t get it”

We get that you very obviously do not ‘get it’.

“why n how actually a man can really stay together with a fellow Guy n get so intimate live together for years”

Is it really that hard to understand? It two people care for each other deeply, the expression of that through physical acts and by building a life together doesn’t seem terribly mysterious to me.

“jeez this is really crazy”

No, ‘crazy’ is thinking that gay people are somehow obligated to explain anything to you about their lives.

“honestly I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen at the end of time”

Without getting into scientific disputes about what time actually is, why do you assume that time will end, or that you will be around to witness it?

“where will the gay people go”

??? I’m not sure that they have to go anywhere.

“bcoz rights now there are quite many n they keep increasing
each day”

“Quite many” is a subjective observation. I’m not sure we have any way to measure whether there are more gay people now than at any other time in history. What we can observe is that social mores change over time, and those changes are allowing gay people to be more honest about their own existence in some places. That doesn’t mean there are actually more of them; it just means there are fewer of them pretending to be heterosexual as a matter of survival.

Now, if the person who wrote the alleged message reads this, I hope they will have the courage to at least crack open a dictionary or Google the definitions of words they don’t understand. I also hope that maybe they will rethink the issue. I don’t expect either thing to happen, but I hope they will.

Mar 4, 2014 at 3:09 pm · @Reply ·

admod

This just sounds more like a troll. The constant reference to “gayism” is just someone being stupid and acting a fool. But people really are that stupid, they cannot wrap their mind around anything other that what is in front of them and what they choose to feel and believe. I’ve been asked a similar question before about how I can feel that way- and I ask “how do you feel that way about women and not men” to which they don’t have a response. We are hardwired with out attractions, we know what we like and we can’t fix it. And for the “more every day” there have always been gays since the first of time, only now is it getting to the point where we are safe enough to stand up and speak out, and not hide who we really are.

Mar 4, 2014 at 3:17 pm · @Reply ·

vitti65

I thinks the Devotion Project Film series could help this reader get a grip on “Gayism.” New York’s own filmmaker and LGBTQ activist Antony Osso has worked hard on his online film series celebrating LGBTQ love. Here is a film featuring the dapper and dashing Tony Osso, that explains why he made the films. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swFTJTn6RME

One of his films, “Foremost In My Mind”, is the story of two beautiful African American women and how they met and fell in love later in life…a must see! American Olympian, Gail Marquis (Women’s Basketball, Montreal ’76), is one of these women and she has been happily partnered with her wife Audrey Smaltz for 15 years. This past fall Mr. Osso, along with Gail Marquis and Audrey Smaltz, was selected to be part of OUT Magazine’s OUT100, a list of the year’s most compelling LGBTQ people.

I like this answer, nicely thought out, and very reasonable.
As for the questioner. How is the weather on Mars these days?

Mar 4, 2014 at 3:41 pm · @Reply ·

vitti65

I think the Devotion Project Film series could help this reader get a grip on “Gayism.” New York’s own filmmaker and LGBTQ activist Antony Osso has worked hard on his online film series celebrating LGBTQ love. Here is a film featuring the dapper and dashing Tony Osso, that explains why he made the films. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swFTJTn6RME

One of his films, “Foremost In My Mind”, is the story of two beautiful African American women and how they met and fell in love later in life…a must see! American Olympian, Gail Marquis (Women’s Basketball, Montreal ’76), is one of these women and she has been happily partnered with her wife Audrey Smaltz for 15 years. This past fall Mr. Osso, along with Gail Marquis and Audrey Smaltz, was selected to be part of OUT Magazine’s OUT100, a list of the year’s most compelling LGBTQ people.

Mar 4, 2014 at 3:42 pm · @Reply ·

dbmcvey

This is, once again, an example of how bad the educational system in America has become.

Mar 4, 2014 at 3:53 pm · @Reply ·

QuintoLover

@the other Greg: Sometimes the site uses the pronoun ‘she’ for guys to show there’s no shame in effeminacy in gay culture.

“Gayism did not exactly begin ma’am. Being gay, queer, homosexual, fruitastic, light in the loafers, or a girl fag- is like the beginning of electricity. It was always there; plenty of people had been shocked, electrocuted or struck by lighting….it existed, even when no one understood it, or knew what it was. Still with me? So if you understand the birds and the bees- try to understand that if bees are boys, I only want to be make a life with other birds. While I can appreciate bees and all their contributions, my brain never feels a need to hump one- not ever. The fact that your brain has difficulty grasping that, doesn’t mean there is something wrong with me. My brain tells me that there is something wrong with you- not for liking bees, but for being so baffled that I don’t. I don’t understand your ugly Christmas sweaters- I never did. This year I bought one for my dog because they were every f-ing where! It was my attempt at trying to embrace the ridicobot fashion habits of the many straight, conservative women in my area whom constantly judge the habits of others, but wear pumpkins, bunnies and reindeer on their sweaters in 30 day intervals because “that what’s you do here!”
As for whether or not there will be gays at the end of time- I often wonder the same thing. Will there be anybody at the end of time though? I assume you mean when Jesus comes back or something? Well I’ve read up on Jesus and his father off and on throughout my life and sometimes I walk away with more questions than answers- but from what I can tell, Jesus was a lovely dude who agreed to die so me and my friends would not have to be condemned for loving birds over bees or vice versa.
As for the amount of gays “increasing by the day”- its like that electricity again. It was always there, it’s just that as time moves forward, more people are beginning to understand it…. they’re installing wiring and buying light bulbs rather than sticking to what they already know or don’t know out of fear. It’s something that was always going to happen…. like the end of slavery, or the beginning of this country! Ma’am, your life may be filled with joy and no judgment from others, but that’s not the case for everyone. When people are forced to live without rights because of what they feel or believe, the oppression (that’s the word for people who are not or don’t feel free) will eventually make those people stand up for themselves. You get back to your scrapbooking or monster truck rally- whatever it is you do to feel good. Just know that “gayism” is and has always been everywhere. EVERYWHERE ma’am. Not everyone- but everywhere. By the way- the term “gayism” makes us giggle, but call it whatever you choose. We’ll be here… being gay… whether you understand it or not.”

Mar 4, 2014 at 6:35 pm · @Reply ·

redcarpet

Gayism started in 1952 as a way to use up a a large world war II surpluss of industrial lubricant.

It was revitalized in the late 90’s as a way to get people to stop posting to comments sections of websites from their god damn phones.

Mar 4, 2014 at 6:40 pm · @Reply ·

Joetx

@dbmcvey: No, it’s just an indictment of the typical educational level of homophobes.

Mar 4, 2014 at 10:39 pm · @Reply ·

Clark

The worst thing about ‘gayism’ are the ones that shove it in your face all the time- not content to just live their lives in the midst of society, but actually force people to ‘accept’ them. They fail to realize that not everyone is universally loved all the time by everyone. It’s the constant screaming and shouting and in-your-face attitude of the tyrannical minority that causes all the anguish for the rest of us who could care less what anyone does in their bedroom, or who they choose to love.
Suck it up and accept the fact that not everyone thinks you’re as special as you do.

Mar 4, 2014 at 11:18 pm · @Reply ·

ethan_hines

Actually I am glad he asked this question because right now I am starting to believe that homosexuality trumps heterosexuality in many ways. First let’s face it most hetro guys want to have sex but they don’t want a kid. For us it’s not a problem not only can’t we get pregnant but you owe us gratitude for preventing overpopulation on Earth. Second when it comes to pleasing a women many men suffer from performance anxiety and sometimes screw up leaving their mate unsatisfied. Again this is not an issue since being satisfied is almost guaranteed every-time two guys have sex. Finally while I don’t condone promiscuity it is a well known fact that for a gay guy finding someone to have sex with is a breeze! So common you know we have it better. You only wish you could have what we have.

@Harley: Maybe you should be civil this uneducated person and ask them if they have read their Bible where it talks about Solomon and David and David’s love for Jonathan, which almost all Biblical scholars (and a preacher friend of my acquaintance, now deceased) believed an example of same sex love between men. In a recent survey, scholars reported that atheists generally know more about what is in the Bible than most Christian believers. As the old saying goes, familiarity breeds contempt. But we have to be understanding, and our steps must be gentle when we are talking to someone with little or no education of any kind. The spelling, grammar, and syntactical errors in the email are a dead giveaway. Any explanation of what he calls “gayism” should be made on his or her level. Monosyllabic and simple.

Mar 5, 2014 at 12:53 am · @Reply ·

sejjo

Oh you poor baby! Sit down before you hurt yourself and let me educate you.

First of, ‘gayism’ isn’t a word so if you want to be smart when you grow up, you need to stop using it. Try ‘homosexuality’ instead – I know I know, it’s a big word, but big words are just smaller words combined. ‘Homos’ is from Greek, meaning ‘the same’. So think of it as ‘the same sex’ (homo-sexuality), which should be self-explanatory. Are you good so far? Excellent.

The word ‘homosexuality’ was coined around the 19th century by a German psychologist. In queer legal theory (yes – there is such a thing, I studied it in law school!) Michel Foucault (google him) says “homosexuality appears as one of the forms of sexuality when it was transposed from the practice of sodomy onto a kind of interior androgyny, a hermaphroditism of the soul. The sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now a species” (this is not to say that homosexuality started in the 19th century, this is just when people started getting a more sophisticated understanding of it, as it was around long before that, arguably since the beginning of time, whenever that was).

Now, for your benefit, homosexuality is when a person with a penis falls in love with another person with a penis, or a person with a vagina falls in love with another person with a vagina. There are also bisexuals, who fall in love with both sexes, and transsexuals and transgendered persons, who are also family, but to shield your fragile and empty little mind, I will spare you an education on transpeople for now – because information overload will be traumatic for you.

Gay people or – what else can we call gay people? Homosexuals! Excellent! Gold star!! See, you’re getting it. Now, gay people have been around forever. They don’t “keep increasing each day”, as you so elegantly put it. What you mean is they are becoming more visible because times are changing and the world is more accepting of them than it was before. Homosexuality is just a preference, like men who like women or women who like men with long hair. it’s just part of human sexuality and is just as beautiful – don’t knock it till you tried it.

And some friendly advice – take some English classes!

Mar 5, 2014 at 1:47 am · @Reply ·

Robsjcfll

Once upon a time I was really hot to trot (OK, I’m old) for girls, then women. I dated our homecoming queen and went on to experience girls/women in college, including a female professor. Then I discovered men. It started with a room mate back rub. Sex with women was great.
Long story short, I discovered M2M sex and M2M love. The intensity was so much more on an emotional level.
Two men can become one at certain moments. Women have needs: understanding (whatever that is). Validity (whatever that is). Women need acknowledgement (whatever that is). Women want you to accept the fact that they NEED everything.
Just give me a man and a dog.

@Caliban: Excellent response but you should have saved it for someone who can comprehend complex sentences. This person is clearly some kind of teabagger and like most of his ilk, he’s incapable of understanding the English language, let alone complex thoughts.

@RomanHans: That sounds like it’ll require a lot of work on Mr. Gayism’s part, which I doubt he’s capable of. He should just move to Mississippi and live with his own kind.

Mar 5, 2014 at 4:01 am · @Reply ·

Freddyeddy

It all started at the end of the last cycle of creation by evolution, when the only remaining Singularity gave birth with a Big Bang, ending Her life cycle, causing the cosmological evolution of the living Universe, Galaxies, Planets, and all the smaller simple and complex living organisms. First there was only one sex, asexual reproduction where there were no masculine creatures. Later a Y chromosome mutated from the origanal X chromosomes, and sexual reproduction began to evolve. As humans evolved with their big brains, it became necessary for humans to evolve as bisexuals, otherwise some heterosexual men would figure out how to wipe out all the competition for breeding rights. Through trial and error, evolution favored the bisexual humans who had to learn how to love eachother in order to work together to protect their families from the blood thirsty heterosexuals. All the women lived in herims to protect their children and had the respect of their sons as their creators.
Then one man(Adam)went against his mother/creator’s herem’s(God) rules and got his sister(EVE) pregnant, whom had a miscarriage(apple). Humans were called walking trees, women were called tree of knowledge of good and evil, and men were known as trees of life. Eve began to eat it, as female mamals do, and her brother Adam took a bite, Mom found out and had to force him out of there home/pride(Eden, as mother mamales often do. He was upset and started his own false masculine heavenly godfather of creation science fiction cult/religion, going against mother nature, overpowering all the women. Women had to take contorl of evolution back and started kabbalah witchcraft so they can control what men think. And here we are, about to nuke ourselves into extinction because of both of these false god worshipping religions.

Mar 5, 2014 at 8:40 am · @Reply ·

Freddyeddy

Men evolved in the immage of our creators/mothers, with nipples and a skin tube/prepuce at the end of our penis so men could use eachothers foreskin for docking, but were forced to cut it off as infants to try to prevent men from enjoying sex with each other to prove their false god was true. This in turn lead to overpopulation, sex with animals,causing UTI’s, STD’s and plagues,extinction of species, environmental collapse/catastophies, natural dissasters, famines, and has been foreseen as the cause of Armegeddon.

Mar 5, 2014 at 10:28 am · @Reply ·

FlavP

@Freddyeddy: Wow! What you just wrote is so far-fetched, it’s probably all true! I love it! Besides, it explain why “docking” is so important!

Mar 5, 2014 at 12:12 pm · @Reply ·

FlavP

@sejjo: Hmm…. I find what you wrote really interesting. Except… our questioning “gurl”, above, might have a hard time following. Remember that with these guys you practically have to baby-talk to make yourself be understood.

Mar 5, 2014 at 12:15 pm · @Reply ·

Hermes

Firstly I’m going to take you all to task at the Queerty office for making fun of or considering non-charitable responses to this person. Do you REALLY think, even for a second that you can gain support for the gay community by being nasty to someone that, even if they were not politically correct in their questioning, actually reaches out for answers for something that they just don’t get? Do you all, seriously, honestly, in your gut get, as in viscerally understand, heterosexuality? I certainly don’t – and I would be lying if I said I did. I totally accept it, embrace my straight friends (and most of my friends are straight) and live fully in the world. I attend and for that matter perform marriages for straight folk, I am a godfather several times over. I am fully part of life – but I do not honestly understand what a man ever finds attractive in a woman. I love our two daughters with all my heart because they are our little ones – but beyond an intellectual acceptance, what a man finds attractive in a woman is totally a cipher to me. Why then would I find it strange that straight people, particularly young ones, see the same cipher when they try to consider why I find another man attractive? Why they cannot grasp how we could be together for well over 20 years? Why they just don’t get me, even if they accept me – just as I don’t get them even as I accept them?

That said, my answer to the young person:

“Gayism” has always been, as far as we know. Studies of animals show that exclusive homosexuality and even homosexual pair bonding exists in thousands of species. (See Bruce Bagemihl, Ph.D. Biological Exuberance; St. Martin’s Press for just a few hundred of those species, together with 20 years of analysis of the phenomena).

In humanity, “gayism” stretches back at least as far as written records. The priesthood of Inanna in ancient Sumeria had to be either homosexual or very crudely, transgendered. Every ancient culture had places for homosexuals, and it was not until Judaism, which came, let us be frank – fairly recently – that some groups started having a problem with them. (probably in the case of Judaism the problem “really” came about because of a need for 100% all hands on deck reproduction to keep the Jewish tribes from being extinguished by their neighbors. You need babies to grow up to be warriors to fight back, after all.)

Pre-literate cultures are harder to discern. Early human cultures appear to have been either matriarchal or at least “theaistic” (as opposed to theistic) (another words it appears that their religions were mostly goddess centered, with female fertility being viewed as very important see Gimbutas, Marija; The Living Goddesses; University of California Press). We see some of that by looking at sites like Catal Hoyuk on the Anatolian Peninsula where thousands of small statues of females have been dug up at the site, but males seem solely represented (or were when last I viewed relevant findings) by well endowed masculine animal figurines. We do know that among a significant grouping of primitive tribes discovered more recently, homosexuals were considered to be some variation of “two spirit” people and had specific positions in society, and specific duties (often raising newly pubescent males, who were too old for their mothers to handle and not quite old enough to go hunting with dad). We also know that there are incentives evolutionarily to having some homosexual members of a tribe, so there is a rational reason human homosexuality.

To answer some of your specific questions – we know that it is both normal and natural for some males to be homosexual and for some females to be so as well. We can tell that homosexuality seems to date as far back as humanity. We know that religiously some religions (including some branches of Christianity) either have or presently do view homosexuals positively, and some view or viewed them negatively. On balance most ancient religion viewed them positively unless population pressure was on the given group. On balance that is not as true now, largely because of the influence of Victorian views on much of the religious world and the continuing hold of those views on said world.

Finally I fully understand that homosexuality is not natural or normal for YOU. Likewise heterosexuality is not natural or normal for ME. Because of that I fully understand why you cannot understand, just as I acknowledge that I just “don’t get” your sexual preference. That does not mean that I do not respect you just as you are — I do; and I hope that you feel the same about me, and about us.

Kindest thoughts,

Hermes

Mar 5, 2014 at 1:42 pm · @Reply ·

nyventureguy

As for “gayism”, it obviously does not exist as defined term. However, “love” is defined in the various dictionaries.

love
noun \?l?v\

: a feeling of strong or constant affection for a person

: attraction that includes sexual desire : the strong affection felt by people who have a romantic relationship

: a person you love in a romantic way

All of the definitions I found do not mention gender. I agree that love is not gender specific. Love is a bond or a connection between two individuals and does not discriminate based on the genders involved. It just happens and does not happen too often but when it does it is a beautiful thing and as such should be recognized as such by all.